a Primal Pursuit

seventy five

It was the next day, and after a restless sleep in a guest bedroom, I was back in the alpha suite as though things were back to normal. Minus the deep cleaning, that had to be done.

After Asra was back from his drug-induced dreamland, he decided that my reward for my clever thinking was a steamy half an hour on his hospital bed. It wasn't the most glamorous of places to get intimate, but at least I could tick it off my bucket list. Right?

After I snorted a laugh, Serenity eyed me curiously. I cleared my throat, shaking my head at her as I walked to peer out of the window.

There was nothing to climb down there, so how did somebody get the rose inside my room?

"Be careful near the window, Luna." Ren muttered.

I smiled, glancing at her from over my shoulder. "I'm just wondering how someone could climb the house."

"Impossible," she quirked an eyebrow. "Why would somebody be climbing your walls?"

I shrugged, looking away from her. I didn't want to lie to Serenity, but as far as she was aware, she was just doing a deep cleaning of our carpet after I spilled a drink. The sheets were already gone, as were the pillows, duvet and even mattress, and Asra had them burned away from pack land. They wore gloves and masks during, and Serenity, being the head housemaid, wore them anyway.

"I don't know. It was just a thought."

"Your room is the safest in the entire building, Luna." Serenity mused, turning off the carpet cleaner. "It is either climb a flat wall or get in through a fingerprint door lock that requires pre-authorised entry."

I hummed, falling into thought as I stared at the blank wall before me. Not only did I think it needed something to decorate it, perhaps a photo frame, but my mind stumbled into an abyss of possibilities.

Nobody could climb that wall. I doubt a wolf as strong as Asra, even Augustus, could scale over that many floors. A vampire? No, they were the same. Unless they had some kind of super-ability of jumping. Even so, over a hundred and fifty feet?

A witch is a strong possibility. Not only can they teleport and materialise, but they could easily manipulate the guards to get past borders. Could their magic infiltrate a fingerprint lock? Nobody was around, and Asra didn't smell anybody. That meant they had hidden their scent, something only possible with a witch's help.

"Can vampires jump?" I wondered.

Serenity heard me and laughed. "Every creature can jump. Are we talking about hopping or leaping?"

I rolled my eyes, pushing myself from the wall. "I mean, can they jump, say... six floors?"

She paused her cleaning; the vacuum whirring absentmindedly in the background. "They can jump high, yeah, but I don't know the exact... science of it."

"Maths, not your forte?" I mused.

She snorted, continuing to clean. "You think I'd be a maid if it was?"

We laughed and fell into a comfortable silence as Ren finished cleaning the carpet. I, of course, had insisted that I could do it, but she complained it would only hurt her ego. Ren was not an egotistical person, so whatever ego she had, I didn't want to destroy.

She was too kind, and the more time we spent together, I realised how level-headed she was. She knew a lot about a lot of things, blaming her father for her various knowledge. Being half human and wolf, she knew a lot about either species, so it made her easy to talk to. She knew how secluded it felt, and she knew how it felt to feel inferior.

However, the more she regarded me as luna, and told me how I should never lift a finger, the more an imposter I felt. My fingers practically itched as the minutes went on watching her clean, to the point she was threatening to throw me out of the window.